Yes, Of Course! We Must "Reach Out" To A GOP Senate With Carbon Capture Bullshit

[hatrack]

EDIT

CCS first entered the national political agenda in the 2000s, in the form of so-called "clean coal." The fuel then provided about half the nation's electricity, and the coal industry created a new lobbying group to promote the technology. Many environmental groups saw the effort as disingenuous at best, and despite billions of dollars in federal support, clean coal never really materialized. One project was abandoned after billions had been spent. The only commercial-scale coal power plant in the country to be outfitted with the technology halted capturing emissions earlier this year when oil prices collapsed—the captured CO2 was used to push oil from fading wells. And even before it stopped removing carbon dioxide, it only captured a tiny portion of its climate-warming pollution.

"Most people, when they think of carbon capture, they think of capturing CO2 from power plants and they often think about coal" as the fuel in those plants, said Brad Crabtree, who runs the Carbon Capture Coalition, which includes coal and oil companies, utilities, environmental groups and unions. In fact, he said, the technology has been used primarily for other applications. Of 10 large-scale CCS plants in the country, all but one are attached to natural gas processing plants, ethanol plants or other industrial facilities with exhausts high in carbon dioxide, making it much cheaper to capture than from power plants with lower concentrations of the gas.

While some coal companies and utilities may still advocate for attaching CCS to their power plants, many proponents of the technology say it can play an important role decarbonizing other sectors with emissions that are harder to eliminate, like cement and steel manufacturing. Some people within the oil and gas industry talk increasingly of attaching carbon capturing equipment to plants that will use natural gas to make hydrogen, a near-zero emission fuel that could then help decarbonize long-haul shipping, aviation and some industrial processes.

EDIT

There are reasons to doubt whether capturing carbon is the best way to cut CO2 emissions. So far, the vast majority of the gas that has been captured in the United States has been sold to oil companies, which use it to push oil out of depleted reservoirs. This was the destination of the CO2 captured at the CCS coal plant, in Texas, and when the price of oil cratered this year, the company could no longer afford to run its capture equipment. Peridas said pumping CO2 into oil reservoirs can have the effect of producing a lower carbon oil than conventional production, but only if coupled with policies that constrain oil demand, like the phase-out of gasoline cars and low-carbon fuel standards. In the absence of those policies, injecting CO2 into oil reservoirs risks simply adding more oil to the global market. ExxonMobil, for example, is likely to have reaped hundreds of millions of dollars in tax incentives by capturing CO2 and selling it for injection in old oil wells, even as the company lobbied to loosen oversight meant to ensure that the CO2 remains underground. It scored a partial victory in that lobbying effort with rules that the Internal Revenue Service is finalizing now.

EDIT

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/07112020/biden-administration-carbon-capture-storage

[kansasobama]

1. We are in trouble also because of Manchin

I hate the fact Manchin would play a big part in the Senate. To be frank, climate change is a likely victim of this election. We really needed a big mandate for this. Democrats need to learn how to use a soft voice to win election and then start implanting change steadily. If all democrats had campaigned like Biden, we would have had the Senate.

Yes carbon capture has some BS in it but is the best we can attempt to start with.

[Finishline42]

2. This is the key

From the OP

in Texas, and when the price of oil cratered this year, the company could no longer afford to run its capture equipment.

Carbon capture at a power plant, concrete plant or steel plant adds cost to what ever they make. How often will that extra cost force decisions like the one I quoted.

If instead you take the money for carbon capture and invest in wind and solar, in transmission lines and energy storage you reduce for decades the need to burn fossil fuels for energy.

[abqtommy]

3. I'd like to reach out to all the reTHUGS in our government, put each of them in a full set of

irons, frog march them into court then onto a plane for their flight to be incarcerated at Gitmo. They are all treasonous bastards who deserve that. Then without them around maybe we can
give some intelligent attention to the real problems of climate change and other ills that
affect our well-being.

[FBaggins]

4. I'll bite. What's the alternative?

I don't think "phase out gasoline cars" is going to get past the Senate. Do we just wait and hope that two years from now will be a better election (in the face of the incumbent mid-term curse)? Or find something that can pass both chambers and become law?